Tag Archives: Foxes

In Defense of Animals Asks Judge to Reconsider Feral Pig Slaughter Ruling

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In Defense of Animals in August asked a judge to reconsider a July decision that rejected its efforts to stop the National Park Service’s plan to eradicate wild pigs on Santa Cruz island in California.

Pigs were first introduced to the island in the mid-19th century. Ever since, according to the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy, they have been eroding the soil and damaging native plants and animals.

To put an end to the problem once and for all, the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy plan to hire a New Zealand firm, Prohunt, to eradicate the pigs. The firm will only receive its $3.9 million fee once there are no more pigs left on the island. Prohunt began killing pigs on Santa Cruz in April 2005.

In Defense of Animals has so far unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the plan in court. Their objections to the slaughter of the animals provides an interesting look at how animal rights ideology conflicts with environmental protection efforts.

The major claim made by the park service is that the presence of the pigs indirectly threatens the Santa Cruz Island fox. According to the park service, golden eagles are attracted to the island to feed on pigs, and while they’re there they also feed on the foxes to the point where there are believed to be only about 150 foxes left on the island.

Nature Conservancy spokeswoman Julie Benson told the Los Angeles Times that the choice was clear — wild pigs exist in large numbers throughout the world, whereas this particular fox only inhabits this island. Killing the pigs to save the foxes is, to Benson, the obvious choice.

Not so to IDA president Elliott Katz who told the Los Angeles Times that trying to make this sort of decision is attempting to foist human morality on to nature (emphasis added),

Northern California veterinarian Elliot Katz said that allowing the deaths of thousands of pigs for the benefit of a few foxes
doesn’t seem to be a fair balance of nature. Katz, founder and president of In Defense of Animals, a nonprofit animal rights
organization based in the Bay Area city of Mill Valley, supports halting the pig slaughter and says he intends to contact
Feldman about lending his support for the lawsuit.

“Our position is to take a step back and not to be killing animals for man’s belief of what’s right and wrong,” Katz said.
“Allowing an injunction will permit everyone to step back and rethink this thing and also to further evaluate whether it’s
necessary to remove each and every pig from the island.”

Presumably since relying on human standards of morality is not possible, Katz will be channeling supernatural powers to guide human interaction with the environment.

Sources:

Suit Filed to Halt Pig Eradication on Santa Cruz Island. Gregory W. Griggs, Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2005.

British Court Rejects Latest Fox Hunting Appeal

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In July, the UK’s High Court rejected a second appeal by fox hunting supporters to overturn the 2004 Hunting Act. That act banned fox hunting with dogs.

In their appeal, the Countryside Alliance argued that the Hunting Act violated the European Convention on Human Rights because it was a “sectarian measure.” Essentially, they argued that the hunting ban was an irrational, ideologically-motivated law akin to, say, a ban on a specific religious practice just because it was practiced by a minority of citizens.

Countryside Alliance’s lawyer, Richard Gordon, had argued that,

What emerges strongly, however the argument is put, is, we suggest, the very divisive nature of the legislation.

Many members of the House of Commons voting on the issue obviously objected strongly to hunting on doctrinal grounds – that is clear.

But we say strong feelings cannot be, and are not in law, a substitute for the exercise that has to be undertaken before Convention rights can be legitimately interfered with.

. . .

We say, if one takes away the strength of feeling from the furor over hunting, very little is left in terms of law, and a total ban of this kind is not justified.

The High Court soundly rejected that line of reasoning. Justices May and Moses said that there was varying opinion about whether or not foxes suffer more when hunted by dogs vs. when they are shot, but that the legislature had a legitimate reason to address this issue. They said,

We consider that there was sufficient material available to the House of Commons for them to conclude that hunting with dogs is cruel.

. . .

[It was] reasonably open to the majority of the democratically-elected House of Commons to conclude that this measure was necessary in the democratic society which had elected them.

The Countryside Alliance bemoaned the verdict, with its chairman John Jackson telling the BBC,

The judges have accepted that there is interference with some of the claimants’ rights, and that the Hunting Act will have a substantial general adverse effect on the lives of many in the rural community.

However, the court, ignoring events in the Commons and the Lords, appears to have proceeded on the assumption that Parliament had a legitimate aim and has itself then speculated on what that may have been.

Whether the court is right to have proceeded in this way is plainly a controversial question./p>

Animal rights advocates, on the other hand, were very pleased. John Cooper, chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports, told The Guardian,

We welcome this recognition that there is no human right to be cruel. The Hunting Act is a popular act, the ban is being enforced and, most importantly, animals are no longer able to be abused in the name of this barbaric bloodsport. This is a resounding defeat for the hunters, who need to move forward and accept the democratic will of parliament and the majority of the general public, and learn to take non for an answer.

The Countryside Alliance is still waiting for the Law Lords in the House of Lords to rule on its appeal of the High Court’s February rejection of its argument that the Hunting Act is in violation of Great Britain’s Parliament Act.

There are likely to be further appeals, but at the moment, the odds of the fox hunting advocates actually prevailing seems pretty slim.

Source:

High court rejects hunting ban challenge. Press Association, July 29, 2005.

Hunt campaign loses court battle. The BBC, July 29, 2005.

Hunting ban ‘a sectarian measure’. Liverpool Daily Post, July 5, 2005.

Police Warn Hunt Opponents about Vigilante Activities

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Police in Cumbria, Great Britain warned in March that they will not tolerate vigilante activities by anti-hunt protests. Right, just like Great Britain has shown it will not tolerate harassment and violence for anti-animal research activists.

Police Superintendent Steve Turnbull told The Whitehaven News,

We would also discourage anyone from disrupting legal activities.

If anybody has any information [on illegal hunts] they should hand it over to the police. We will listen to them.

Wow — police are actually going to discourage people from interfering with legal activities. What a bold policy. Turnbull’s really going out on a limb here.

Source:

Police Warn Anti-Hunt Vigilantes. The Whitehaven News, April 2005.

Hunts Continue Despite Ban

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In a press release, the Countryside Alliance noted that although the ban on fox hunting with hounds went into effect on February 18th, hunts actively continued despite the ban.

According to the press release,

Hunts have taken part in more than 1,000 days of hunting and approximately 800 foxes alone have been killed since the ban came into force. Fox hunts have used a variety of methods including flushing foxes to guns, and terrier work to protect game birds.

It is a huge morale boost to see hunts determined to retain their infrastructure until this temporary ban is repealed. Hunts around the country have shown just how impossible it would be for already over stretched police forces to enforce the legislation.

The response from animal rights activists has been that the number would have been even greater without the ban and that some of the hunts mentioned above may be in violation of the law, while pro-hunt activists maintain they are operating legally and this is about the same number of foxes killed during the same period last year.

Source:

800 foxes killed since the ban on hunting. Charles Clover, The Daily Telegraph, March 25, 2005.

Animal Rights Activists Nails Problems with Anti-Hunting Legislation

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As everyone reading this is probably well aware, the ban on hunting foxes with hounds finally went into effect in Great Britain earlier this month. Although pro-hunting groups still have some limited legal options left, it is likely that the opponents of fox hunting will prevail and fox hunting with hounds will enter a very odd quasi-legal status, given the likely lack of enthusiasm on the part of police to enforce the ban and the confusion that the ban creates about what is and is not a legal hunt.

Shortly after the ban finally went into effect, The Daily Post published a profile of League Against Cruel Sports and North Wales Animal Rights activist Judi Hewitt which, to my mind, really did a nice job of inadvertently summing up the idiocy of the anti-hunt position.

Characterizing defenders of hunting as “evil people” Hewitt told The Daily Post,

The ban was good news, but I can’t understand how some limited hunting will still be allowed. All killing of wildlife should end, and I can’t stop until it does. The hunters complain about their civil rights — but what about the civil rights of those who want to visit the countryside without seeing innocent creatures horribly killed?

So let me get this straight — Hewitt won’t rest until rural areas are free of “all killing of wildlife” but she’s taken up the standard on behalf of foxes? She wants to be spared “seeing innocent creatures horribly killed” in natural settings, but comes to the aid of one of the cleverest hunters in the animal kingdom, the fox? (Foxes will, for example, engage in what is euphemistically called “surplus hunting” — killing far more prey than it can eat at the time in order to bury the carcasses and dig them up later).

How does Hewitt get from the proposition that killing wildlife is wrong to the completely contradictory proposition that foxes are “innocent”? Why do people become “evil” when they simply do to the fox what the fox has no problem at all doing to “innocent” birds and rodents?

Somebody wake me up when these people start making sense.

Source:

No rest for ‘evil people’. Andrew Forgrave, Daily Post, February 17, 2005.

Great Britain's Ban on Fox Hunting Finally Goes Through

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After years of trying and failing to force through a ban on fox hunting, the Labor government finally succeeded in passing a law that will ban fox hunting with hounds beginning in February 2005.

In order to do so, however, the government had to invoke the Parliament Act for only the fourth time since 1949. The Parliament Act allows the House of Commons to override opposition from the House of Lords. With the House of Lords again opposing the ban on fox hunting by a vote of 153-114, invoking the Parliament Act was the only way the ban was ever going to happen.

Since 1949, the Parliament Act had only been used to pass the War Crimes Act of 1991, the European Parliamentary Elections Act of 1999, and the Sexual Offences Act of 2000 (to lower the age of consensual sex for homosexuals). Apparently, the Labor government find fox hunting to be an issue on the same scale as war crimes and sexual offences.

Royal Society for the Prevent of Cruelty to Animals’ John Rolls called the bill,

. . . a watershed in the development of a more civilized society for people and animals.

But many of those involved in the act — including supporters — see the bill as being not so much about animals, but rather being about British class warfare.

On November 21, for example, Labor MP Peter Bradley — a strong proponent of the ban — penned an op-ed for the Sunday Telegraph headlined, “Yes, this is about class war” which read, in part,

Now that hunting has been banned, we ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom, it was class war.

Labour governments have come and gone and left little impression on the gentry. But a ban on hunting touches them. It threatens their inalienable right to do as they please on their land. For the first time, a decision of a Parliament they don’t control has breached the lodge gates.

The placards of the Countryside Alliance plead “Listen to Us”, but what they mean is “Do What We Say” – as for centuries we have. That old order no longer prevails. Deference has been eroded by a new, universal prosperity. It’s the recognition of that irrevocable change that has made the campaign for hunting so fierce and yet so futile.

The landowners have come to realize that although they still own the country, they no longer run it. That does not make them the victimized minority they claim to be, but it does make them very angry.

So the minority which for centuries ran this country from the manor houses of rural England now rails against the hegemony of an elected majority in Parliament. And, covertly encouraged by some peers and Tory grandees, those who today threaten to defy the laws they do not like bear the names of the legislators who for generations kept the rest of us in our place.

But the problem the landowners face is not theirs alone. It is shared by the Conservatives with whom, to their mutual disadvantage, they are so closely associated.

. . .

The old order is going, but its values continue to dominate the Tory belief system. In a culture that now demands equality of opportunity, too many Conservatives can only properly enjoy what others do not have.

That is why they have an ideological commitment to private health and public schools. It’s why they oppose the right to roam and a ban on hunting. For them it’s ownership of property, especially land, and not citizenship that confers privilege. It’s why they believe that the rights of minorities – or at least their minority – should prevail over those of majorities. But in an age in which we are all aspirational and few are deferential, that is an increasingly unappealing philosophy. The tide is against the Tories as it is against the hunters and, now more than ever, the House of Lords.

Fox hunting supporters, for their part, vowed to defy the ban. Countryside Alliance chairman John Jackson told the Associated Press,

True civil disobedience is now on the horizon.

In fact, several hundred hunt supporters protested outside a banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II for visiting French President Jacques Chirac.

Source:

Yes, this is about class war. Peter Bradley, Sunday Telegraph, November 21, 2004.

Queen approves hunting ban. ic Croydon, November 18, 2004.

Brits outlaw fox hunting. Associated Press, November 18, 2004.

BBC Claims More Foxes Killed After Hunt Ban In Scotland than Before

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The BBC is reporting that the number of foxes killed by hunts in Scotland actually increased after the Scottish Parliament passed a ban on hunting with dogs.

The legal change in Scotland forbid huntsmen from using dogs to hunt down and kill foxes. Instead, they are only allowed to use dogs to flush out foxes who then have to be shot by hunters, and in any event only for pest control purposes.

According to the BBC, this change actually makes it more likely that foxes being hunted will be killed,

It’s claimed that since a ban came into force the hunts are killing more foxes, because the animals stand less chance of getting away from guns than they did from the hounds.

There’s also concern that in the past the younger, fitter, healthier foxes were the most likely to get away from the pack.

But now they’re the very ones most likely to break from cover first, which makes them more like to be shot.

Older or diseased animals may stay hidden and so escape. Hunts say this is bound to be bad for fox populations in the long run.

The most amusing part of the Scottish ban is the debate over “flushing” vs. “searching.” Under the ban, hunters are allowed to use dogs to flush foxes from their hiding places, but they are not supposed to use dogs to actively search for foxes. Sounds like a hair-splitting lawyer’s employment program to me. The BBC quotes huntsman Trevor Adams saying,

Flushing, and looking for a fox, are pretty similar things really. The fox is a wild animal and nobody knows exactly where it is, so you have to search for it a certain extent to find out where it is. . . . What you’re not allowed to do is go off searching, without a need to control that animal.

Sounds like they’d need to take a lawyer with them on every hunt. Frankly, I’m disappointed that the rights of dogs to pursue their carnivorous nature with foxes isn’t taken seriously by the animal rights activists.

Source:

Huntsmen ‘destroying more foxes’. Huw Williams, BBC, November 20, 2004.

Groups Continue Campaign to Ban Fur Farming in Ireland

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Compassion in World Farming, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and UK-based Respect for Animals have continue their two-year old effort at convincing Ireland to ban fur farming.

CWF and the IPSCA recently released a poster intended for secondary schools and colleges to highlight the alleged evils of fur farming.

Compassion in World Farming is campaigning jointly with the UK-based group, Respect for Animals, for all fur farming to be banned in the Republic of Ireland. As part of our campaign, we have put into place a programme of street events around the country. We have an eye-catching human sized silver fox in a cage and we are collecting signatures on a petition calling on the Agriculture Minister to ban fur farming. We also have pre-printed Shame on Ireland – Ban Fur Farming postcards addressed to the Minister.

According to CIWF, there are currently 6 mink farm and at least 2 fox farms with about 140,000 mink and 1,700 foxes total.

Sources:

CIWF and ISPCA call for ban on fur farming. Online.IE, January 29, 2004.

Campaign to ban fox and mink fur farming in the Republic of Ireland.. Press Release, Compassion In World Farming, January 29, 2004.

Colorado Bans Feeding of Fox and Coyotes in Urban Areas

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On January 8, the Colorado Wildlife Commission voted unanimously to prohibit the feeding of fox and coyotes in urban areas of the state.

Mike King, regulations manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, told The Rocky Mountain News,

We have prohibited feeding coyotes and fox in any area where shooting a gun is not allowed. . . .We want people to stop feeding wildlife, especially animals that could be dangerous.

According to the Rocky Mountain News, the rules change follows a 2002 incident in which a woman was bitten by a coyote that a restaurant kept leaving out food for.

Violators of the ban will be fined $68 for each offense.

Source:

Request now a rule: Don’t feed the wildlife. Gary Gerhardt, Rocky Mountain News, January 9, 2004.

South Dakota Proposes Allowing Aerial Hunting on Public Lands

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In March the South Dakota state Game, Fish and Parks Commission will consider a regulatory change to allow aerial hunters to hunt foxes and coyotes on public land. Current regulations allow hunting over private land, but forbid it over public land and water.

If approved, the change would open up an additional million acres for aerial hunting of foxes and coyotes.

Not everyone who hunts coyotes is happy about the proposed rules change. Coyote hunter Jerry Pier told the Rapid City Journal that he was afraid aerial hunters would accidentally shoot hunters on the ground, as well as fears that aerial hunters might be too efficient, leaving few coyotes for hunters on the ground to shoot.

Those favoring the change, however, argue that it’s already extremely difficult for aerial hunters to distinguish between public and private land, and that the change is needed to keep coyote numbers in check.

Doug Hansen, Game, Fish and Parks Wildlife Director for Pierre, South Dakota, told the Rapid City Journal,

It’s kind of a classic conflict between interests. If you’re out there as a predator hunter, I can see how interference from an airplane and gunner would affect your interests. On the other hand, if you’re a producer losing sheep to coyotes and public land is a safe haven for coyotes, your interests are a whole lot different.

Sources:

Aerial hunting rules may be changed. Associated Press, January 8, 2004.

S.D. aerial hunting law concerns coyote hunters. Kevin Woster, Rapid City Journal, January 15, 2004.